Late at night, Chuck Brown walked out of the East Gotham bar, humming a song under his breath. His steps were steady. His eyes were clear.
After his drunken confession to Jude—after nearly destroying Batman's entire plan with loose lips and tequila—Chuck was terrified to drink too much. He'd strictly limited himself to two drinks. Staying coherent was harder than it sounded.
"Oh, I say let's fly, honey~"
It was an old song his mother used to hum while doing the dishes. The memory was warm, but the moment he stepped fully onto the sidewalk, his singing paused mid-verse.
The big guy. Orange shirt and jeans. He was leaning against the bar's window frame, smoking a cigarette in almost the exact same position he'd been in two hours ago. The same muscleman who'd driven Jude away earlier.
Why was he still here?
A bad feeling settled in Chuck's stomach. Ever since he'd agreed to set up a meeting with the Joker, he'd been paranoid, seeing threats in every shadow. At that moment, the burly man shifted his gaze, staring directly at Chuck with the fierce, aggressive glare of a street tough marking his territory.
Chuck quickly broke eye contact and breathed a small sigh of relief. It was a normal reaction. You're scaring yourself, Chuck, he thought. Just a random muscleman who likes this spot.
He turned and walked toward the dark alley next to the bar—a shortcut he'd used a hundred times. He started humming again, trying to recapture that fleeting moment of peace.
"Where are you going, kid? Fly to the sky, darling~"
Behind him, the strong man moved.
His footsteps changed. The part of his shoes that touched the pavement became extremely soft, like wet clay, making absolutely no sound. He approached with the silent precision of a predator.
Then, his entire body began to lose its definition. His orange shirt melted into his flesh. His jeans merged with his legs. The disguise collapsed into a towering, shifting mass of wet, brown mud.
Clayface.
The living mud surged forward like a tidal wave, completely enveloping Chuck from behind.
Chuck didn't even have time to scream. One moment he was humming, the next he was swallowed whole by a mud-faced monster, trapped like an insect in amber.
A heartbeat later, the monster's body compressed, recovering its shape. The orange shirt, the jeans, the massive build—it all returned perfectly. Because Clayface was the size of two men, absorbing Chuck's body didn't even cause a visible bulge.
Without raising a single alarm, the burly man walked away. Chuck Brown was gone.
"Well, not surprising at all."
Five stories up, Jude stood on a rooftop, his system-enhanced vision tracking the kidnapping with clinical detachment.
He had known the muscleman in the bar was a fake the second he walked in. The disguise was masterful—the simulated breathing, the textured pores, the fake scars—but Gotham in the summer was sweltering, and the giant hadn't smelled of a single drop of sweat. When Jude focused his hearing, he found only a hollow silence inside that massive chest cavity. No heartbeat.
Then there was the orange juice. A Gotham street tough doesn't politely pay a kid a hundred dollars to leave; they throw a punch. But the giant had been terrified of Jude's drink splashing him. Water dilutes mud.
Before leaving the bar, Jude had even quietly activated his [I Didn't Kill Anyone] skill just in case the giant tried to snap Chuck's neck on the street. But the giant hadn't attacked. He wanted a kidnapping, not a murder.
Jude watched Clayface walk straight to a nondescript black sedan parked on the curb. The engine was warm. The vehicle pulled away smoothly, taking a winding, counter-surveillance route designed to shake off tails.
Professional, Jude thought, leaping to the next rooftop to keep pace. But not good enough.
Fifteen minutes later, the car stopped next to an abandoned Victorian theater. Clayface got out and walked through the unlocked front doors without a backward glance.
Inside, the theater was anything but abandoned.
Clayface walked across a royal blue carpet subtly woven with a repeating pattern of green question marks. The stage, scrubbed and polished, was illuminated by an upgraded, professional LED lighting rig. Red lights blinked from discreet surveillance cameras tucked into the molding.
At the front of the stage, the Riddler was waiting.
He wore a perfectly tailored green suit and a jaunty top hat, leaning casually against the stage's edge. "Did the policeman notice you?" he asked, as if commenting on the weather.
"No," Clayface replied calmly. "He just left."
"Good." The Riddler's jaw tightened. "I've had enough of that idiot messing with my plans." He spat the words, ticking points off his fingers. "No parents, no friends, no girlfriend. He's a complete blank slate. But sooner or later, I'm going to find his weakness."
Clayface's mud-face shifted thoughtfully. "How about just killing him?" he asked, with the casual tone of someone suggesting pizza for dinner.
"Don't worry about it." The Riddler waved a dismissive hand. "He's predictable. When the plan begins, we'll just shoot him. One bullet. No more Officer Sharp."
Clayface reached directly into his own chest cavity—the mud parting like water—and pulled out a plastic ziplock bag. "These are from Brown's pockets."
He tossed the bag to the Riddler. It held a wallet, a phone, some cash, two cheap candies, and two lighters.
The Riddler spread the contents on a table. His eyes locked on the lighters. One was a standard cheap plastic model; the other had an elegant kite logo embossed on the side.
"Take all these things," the Riddler ordered, turning the lighters over. "Have someone drive them around the streets. I don't want any GPS, RFID, or Batman bullshit tracking us here."
"Wait a minute."
Poison Ivy stepped from the shadows of the stage wings, vines trailing behind her like a living dress. She reached out and picked up the kite lighter.
"Leave this one for me." Her green eyes locked onto a tiny, clear compartment on its side. "There's a seed inside."
The Riddler shrugged. "Disassemble it and take the seed out. I'm not interested in botanical specimens as long as the area is secure."
Ivy didn't need to be told twice. Thin, delicate vines emerged from her fingertips, acting with the precision of surgical instruments. They pulled the lighter apart—body, cap, flint, spring—until only the tiny, dark green seed remained.
Pleased that no electronic trackers were hidden inside, the Riddler clapped his hands. The sound echoed sharply through the empty theater.
"Alright. Preparations are complete. It's time to release Mr. Chuck Brown." He smiled—the kind of smile that meant someone was about to have a very bad day. "Let's begin the show."
Off to the side, Ivy held the seed in her palm. She examined it with the intense, reverent focus of a scientist discovering a new species.
It felt different. Special. The life force inside it was concentrated, almost artificial in its perfection. Her fingers closed gently around it. Whatever this was, she was going to study it carefully.
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